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Notes -
The problem is that the jobs are getting a lot more complicated. In peacetime, Johnny Serf has to farm a few acres of land with a couple of different types of crops. It can get tricky but it’s not rocket science and Johny has been doing it his whole life. If Johnny is lazy or a drunk and his crop yields are ten percent lower than his neighbor that mostly doesn’t affect anyone other than Johnny. In wartime Johnny has to hold a pike on a marginal section of the line and let his liege lord do most of the real work.
His great-great-great grandson John Tradie has to drive a semi truck, and if he’s not constantly paying attention every second he could kill a dozen people with it. Or he works in an office doing rather complicated drafting and clerical work that in Great Grandpa Johnny’s day would only be done by monks, scribes and merchant guilds (he has to read for God’s sake!). If John Tradie goes to war he has to operate the radar system on a Patriot battery that costs more than his grandfather’s liege-lord’s entire fief.
Subsistence farming is actually a very complicated job which brutally punishes laziness. You are correct that a stellar IQ is not needed but apathetic, un conscientious farmers starved to death or wound up enslaved.
Do you know any good books on this? I know about "peasant studies," but the peasant studies books I've read tend to be highly sociological/politicized.
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